Okay, this is pretty seriously "other stuff", but as I'm watching the end of the Tour de France, I figured I'd note I finally pulled in a sprinting jersey in Zwift. Zwift is a virtual bike riding service where you hook your bike onto a "smart trainer" that translates the work you're doing to a computer (I use an iPad mini) connected via bluetooth. It's neat virtual world... the smart trainers make things more difficult when you go up a virtual hill and faster on the way down. It does feel like road biking, but from the safety of my garage.

There are usually sprint segments in each Zwift route in their many virtual worlds, from routes based in Paris to London to Richmond, VA. So if you're going for a 20 mile ride, you might have three sprint segments sprinkled in that route that range from a sixth to a quarter-mile or so.

And if you're the fastest person to have ridden a sprint in the last hour or so, your virtual in-game rider is awarded a "sprint jersey", kind of like sprint jerseys that are awarded in the Tour de France.

I have a love-hate relationship with the sprint segments in the middle of routes. If I try, I can usually get times that land me in the top 5-10% of riders (most of which probably aren't even going out of their way to sprint, to be fair), and I do lots better the shorter the sprint. But then I'm absolutely shot for miles and my overall route time craters. It's a weird risk-reward. It's fun to look like a dope in my garage peddling like a madman to get my name up on a leaderboard, but it's sad seeing my wattage (they measure the power you're producing and put it on your screen at [essentially] all times) crash.

Anyhow, there was a fancy virtual "kit" (biking outfit) that you could get this month on Zwift if you fully ran any two routes in France (Paris or the countryside) this month, give or take, and I was starting my second French-based route this month when a sprint segment rolled up. I knew it'd kill my fairly long ride to sprint hard, but as the starting line appeared, I noticed I was speeding up for a good sprint start. I didn't quite "leave it all out on the road" in the hopes I wouldn't completely ruin the rest of my ride, but it was danged close.

The result? I was one hundredth of a second away from winning the sprint. DAGGUMMIT! This is what you get when you don't quite sell out to something, I guess. Let this be a lesson to you.

But then, about four miles later down the road, it looks like the rider in front of me on the sprint leaderboard dropped offline, promoting you-know-who to sprint leader. AMAZE. Woohoo! I almost didn't notice, but suddenly my usual kit wasn't visible and it had been replaced by a dark green jersey.

Turns out I didn't get the normal bright green Zwift sprint jersey -- maybe because I'm "in France" during the Tour -- I got the official Tour jersey, Skoda green with a Tour logo on the right breast.


It didn't last long; I guess someone else faster beat me a few minutes later. Half of getting the jersey, I believe, is doing it when things are slow, which I think I did. I was riding a less popular route at a less popular time, so anyone with speed could easily beat me. But it was cool to be definitively "the fastest" for a few minutes last week, especially for someone who is not a fast rider overall.

At the very least, Zwift (free for 25 [virtual] km each month!) tricked me into working a little harder by making me think sprinting like a madman on a 25 year-old mountain bike in my garage is fun. ๐Ÿ˜‰

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